


breathlessly

by ohargos



Category: Billy Elliot (2000)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:53:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1639946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohargos/pseuds/ohargos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy and Michael may or may not run into each other in the middle of a street on a rainy day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	breathlessly

**Author's Note:**

> Written for rilla

 

 

There is a chance this never happens, because later, later, later, in that next life, the one that comes after this, Billy has black and white paint on his hands, a forgotten lick along his jawbone, and Michael is holding a bouquet of flowers in his slightly trembling hands, smiling in a manner that's almost painful. 

(And outside, the winter air cools his burning cheeks, and his boyfriend has the kind of knowing smile that he cannot stand and loves simultaneously, and he inclines his head, and there's that smile, "First love, huh?" and Michael returns his smile and doesn't say anything, because what it really was is a secret. And no, later he thinks that that isn't quite right. It's not so much a secret as something that no longer has a name, something spoken once in a dead tongue with no dictionaries left behind.)

So maybe this never happens.

\--

It's raining, sort of, a light drizzle, not really rain, not enough to make you open your umbrella or long after the one you forgot at home. Billy is grateful for the rain because his muscles are aching, and he is grateful for that ache, because that is the exact thing he loves, that and the way you forget all about gravity in mid-jump and sometimes the way you cannot tell yourself apart from the music. Those are the things he loves, those exact things are what he loves more than he has ever loved anything.

So it's sort of raining and Billy's muscles ache the way they always do after practise, and then Michael is there, in the street where it's sort of raining, and the wind has caught the tail of his scarf, and.

(There is a moment when Billy wonders if this is a coincidence, the way they meet - if this happens in the first place, that is - or if Michael came here looking for him, and doesn't know which would be odder. He doesn't ask, and hopes he knows, instead.)

"It's been--" And that's where they both cut off, maybe to count years or maybe because they don't have to count.

\--

And Billy doesn't quite know what to say. He isn't sure why this is, but words keep escaping him, and he stumbles over them, and then he catches Michael smiling the kind of smile that best mates smile at each other across a room - the kind that reminds of having a shared language, and that kind of thing should mean never being at loss for words, and somehow, still, Billy doesn't quite know what to say.

Michael is better at it, and this is no surprise. (There is a soft sadness colouring his smile, just as there's always been.) His questions are quick and natural, and he gets Billy to talk about dancing, about the nearing performance, and watches him forget that moments before he could not find a single word. (Makes him forget the subjects he has no words for.)

They walk along the streets, a little too fast, headed nowhere, but forced to move somehow, and at a street corner Billy stops, and stops talking, and looks at Michael, as if waking.

He looks like a young boy, red-lipped, red-cheeked, that light flickering in his eyes and that shade of sadness beneath the surface there. (Billy recalls the bittersweetness of being eleven and in love with dancing, and it's nothing like being twenty and in love with dancing, and the memory makes him ache.) Billy finds himself wondering if it's lipstick, or if he's just naturally that way, a painfully bright creature, and thinking this, he can feel the blush creeping down from his ears to his face.

For a moment here, they are eleven and flushed from running along the stone walls and breathless with laughter.

And they laugh, stumbling across the vivid memory at the same moment, and of course it hurts.

\--

And then, of course, Billy has to go back to practise, and Michael grins, "And time for me to turn back into a pumpkin.", and there's something Billy wants to say, and again he cannot find the words, or rather, it's like they are written in a foreign tongue and he can't pronounce them.

So instead Michael smiles again, and his eyes are full of light (they are always, always full of light, and even so, he always, always looks a little sad, like there's some ache so bittersweet within him that he's unwilling to let it go) and he leans in and kisses Billy on the cheek like they did at the age of eleven, and this is another one of those goodbyes. (Again, they part smiling.)

It's raining, sort of, and the wind has caught the tail of Michael's scarf, and briefly, the words _could have been_ cross Billy's mind, and they linger, until in mid-jump, he feels gravity disappear and all such things, such aches and hollow spaces float away, weightless. (That, after all, is one of his great loves.) And maybe this never happened in the first place, and they'll meet again in the next life.

Somewhere, though, there are two young boys running, running along cobblestone streets, breathless with laughter and thrill and the bittersweet ache of being alive like this.

 


End file.
